Loves a Redhead, the Doctor
by RayWritesThings
Summary: Donna can't help but notice the Doctor has a fascination with her hair.


**Hello, readers. I've decided to start cross-posting some of my fics from AO3 and tumblr over to FFN, so if you recognize this story most likely you've read it on either of my accounts there (Ray_Writes and raywritesthings, respectively). If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy!**

**-RayWritesThings**

**Loves a Redhead, the Doctor**

Maybe Donna hadn't set out across the universe to find a husband, but she didn't mind so much getting a boyfriend out of the deal. The fact that she'd actually found said boyfriend on Earth before the whole traveling bit had started was a funny sort of accident, but then, it had taken the traveling to prove he was boyfriend material at all.

And even still she had her doubts, like as to how he could possibly consider her girlfriend material out of all the people he'd traveled with before. Gorgeous Martha, no doubt Rose had been pretty, and judging by some of the things she'd found stuffed in the back of the wardrobe – a certain leather bikini came to mind – well. She was hardly the pick of the lot!

Best mates, she'd had no trouble swallowing. They still were, of course, and it was sort of a relief dating someone who already knew what she was like and somehow still wanted her, shouting and all. Took the pressure off.

She had plenty experience with _want_. Her past boyfriends had really only ever had eyes for her chest, which had got a bit dull really. That wasn't to say that same sort of healthy appreciation of her assets didn't also extend to Martians, though hers would give a sniff and rattle off some nonsense about his people being above all that that they both knew was total bollocks whenever she called him on it.

But even after traveling with the Doctor began to include dating the Doctor—Donna still pinched herself from time to time, just to make sure she hadn't fallen into some other reality where this could feasibly be expected to happen—she didn't feel _ogled_ that same way she had in previous relationships.

Sure, he watched her, but more often than not he was looking at her face which was a nice change. Donna even caught him staring at the back of her head with a certain fondness sometimes.

Only it wasn't the back of her head, was it? It was her _hair_.

He was always touching it. Picking a lock of it off her shoulder absently and rubbing it between his fingers when they sat next to each other, tucking it behind her ear when he kissed her cheek, always having a hand in it whenever they had a proper snog.

If she wore her hair up when they went out, as soon as they got back he was wanting to help her take it down. The first time he'd asked if he could, she'd nearly laughed in his face.

"What, and wind up with your fingers all in knots around my head?

Donna had acquiesced under that puppy dog stare, though, figuring he couldn't do too much harm just plucking some of the pins out. She'd planned to take care of the rest once he'd inevitably lost interest.

But the Doctor hadn't missed a single one; instead he removed each pin with deft fingers, then combed those fingers gently through her hair to work out any tangles, and then _that_ had turned into a massage right at the roots and the base of her skull.

And it…well it had felt rather nice, actually, so Donna had just sort of let it happen. Things got sort of hazy after that, though she was pretty sure it had involved her pushing him down onto her bed and curling up half on top of him in sheer contentment. She'd been mortified about it the next morning, yet all he'd done was grin like a loon the whole day.

And somehow, he wanted to do it all over again the next time she'd pulled it up for their trip to Regency era!

"So what is this then?" Donna asked one evening, lying on her side in bed and not paying attention to a word of the magazine she'd been attempting to read for the last half hour. She felt her lack of focus was reasonable, however, considering Spaceman had abandoned all pretenses of reading his own book and instead spent the same half hour nuzzling the back of her neck which of course meant burying his nose right in her hair. Seriously, how was she not expected to ask?

"Hm?"

"This, Martian, what you're doing."

The Doctor surfaced for just a moment. "I'd rather thought that was fairly obvious." Then he went straight back to it—and that right there was rather good, that spot behind her ear. Trust him to find it, he _was_ clever!

Then his lips moved and he kissed her hair. Actually kissed it.

"Have you got a hair fetish?"

He sat up. "_What_?"

She rolled over to face him properly with a sigh. "You know, a sort of obsession with hair. You find it sexy." She'd already pegged him for an oral fixation, but that wasn't hard.

His mouth worked soundlessly for a minute as he eyed her in clear bafflement. "Why wouldn't I?"

Well, that had been remarkably easier than she'd expected. "Just sort of helpful to know this stuff seeing as we're together and all. Suppose I could have figured it on my own. I mean, how much time do you spend in the bathroom getting that right?" She indicated his own wild head of hair with a tilt of her chin.

"No, Donna it's not a hair thing—"

"You just said—"

"It's a _you_ thing. You, Donna. I think you're sexy." When she just looked at him, he seemed to take that as an indication to keep babbling on. "So yes, by extension that includes your hair because it is rather magnificent." He reached down, playing with a lock of it that had fanned out across the pillow. "_Molto bene_." The Doctor smiled at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

She stared up at him. "But I'm _ginger_."

"I know!" His eyes were all lit up now, like the very fact of her being ginger was some special treat. "I've always wanted to be ginger. You know I've lived for over nine-hundred years and never been ginger? Not once!"

"So go to the salon! You're an adult, last I checked." Truthfully Donna hoped he wouldn't. It'd look awful.

He seemed to agree, judging by the wrinkle to his nose. "No, not like that. Natural."

She snorted. "Think you missed the boat on that about a millennium ago, Spaceman."

But the Doctor didn't exactly look put out. "We'll see," was all he said.

She rolled her eyes. Mad, he was. What was she going to do with him? "Listen, the universe did you a favor. You don't want to be ginger."

"Why not?"

"Oh, apart from the fact that it's awful?" She held up a hand, counting off on her fingers. "You get teased all the time for it in school, called a ginge, people think you don't have a soul—"

"Why would the color of your hair determine whether or not you had a soul?"

"I'm not saying it makes sense! But, see, it's just not a good color. It doesn't go well with a lot of stuff and it just…" she trailed off with a shrug. Or best she could manage lying on her back.

"Who told you all those things?" The Doctor asked quietly.

"No one," she answered immediately. Then amended, "People. I don't know. Does it matter?"

"Yes," he answered firmly. She'd rarely seen him so serious, and certainly not about something like this. "Because they're wrong." His features softened out again, though his gaze remained just as steady. "You're brilliant. You're beautiful—gorgeous, actually."

Donna scoffed and moved to roll back over. "Come off it."

One of his hands came down on the other side of her, though, and then her Spaceman was hovering over her. "Donna Noble. You're gorgeous. All of you. Hair included." He punctuated each short phrase with a kiss; her forehead, her nose, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, till he was left grinning centimeters from her lips.

She remembered the kids at school, her so-called friends, fighting with her mum to let her keep her hair down for that both wonderful and awful wedding day where she'd lost a fiancé who never loved her and found a best friend who always would. It all seemed so trivial and pointless and far away with him here, looking at her like he'd never seen anything so lovely in his life.

"You're daft," Donna told him, but pushed herself up on her elbows to kiss him again.

"Donna!" The Doctor's voice echoed down the corridor from the console room as she stood considering her reflection in her en suite. "Come on! We'll miss our reservation!"

"Put us in the Vortex if you're so bothered!" She hollered back.

Dinner at the candle meadows of Karass don Slava. A nice change from their usual routine of blundering into alien invasions and popular uprisings, but who was she to complain?

It sounded posh, candle meadow. Her first instinct was to reach for the hair pins, but Donna stopped herself. Eyeing the mirror again, she turned this way and that. The dress she knew was a good one; she loved how she looked in it. She'd taken extra care with her makeup. Why _shouldn't_ she show off her hair a little?

When she reached the console room, she found Spaceman in the same suit as always, of course. Though if she weren't mistaken, the tie was new. And his hair was looking particularly, well, _him_. Probably spent a whole ten minutes extra on it.

Better than all that was the way he whirled around at her entrance only for whatever he'd been planning to stay to get stuck in his throat. He looked as if he'd been struck dumb. Donna pressed her lips together and ducked her head, trying to hide her pleased smile.

"Donna…"

"What was that about a reservation?"

"Uhh right! Dinner! That, yes." He nearly tripped over himself to reach the door and hold it open for her.

Donna stepped out into the candle meadow. The sun was just about set and the candles twinkled beneath a starry sky. The scent of wildflowers was in the air. "Oh, it's _beautiful_."

"I quite agree." When she glanced back, he wasn't looking at the meadow. Rather, he was gazing right at her, the candlelight making his eyes practically shine.

Donna shook her head. "You never stop, do you?"

His smile somehow only grew in response. "No."


End file.
